Fireside Lounge For those who aren’t familiar with the tiny appendage attached like a tenacious little barnacle to the lower side of Oakland known as Alameda….that’s what it is.  You reach it and escape it vis a vis one of two means, a tunnel on one end, and a bridge

            Just a fraction of the collection of oddities at Cafe Van Kleef   Oakland is not San Francisco, and therein lies what attracts and repels many people to and from the East Bay city.  San Francisco in the west, framed by delicate curls of

A Big Change to This Year’s Voter Guide We’ve been doing voter guides for a really long time. I’m pretty sure we put our first one out in like 2010 or something. And I know that thousands of you rely on our voter guides to help you make decision. But

  If you’re looking for a dark, divey, corner bar in the Outer Mission – pop into Pop’s Bar on 24th and Bryant. This small bar is a great place to grab some stiff cocktails or shitty beer and shot combo specials. A red strip and a shot of tequila

Dark and divey, Edinburgh Castle is just one of those bars at which you always want to drink. It’s nothing fancy. It’s just a spacious and unpretentious pub; but still pretty awesome. The first thing you will notice upon entering Edinburgh Castle is the decent sized smoking room. It’s a

Lately I’ve been feeling very dive-y when it comes to bars.  Eff spending an hour doing my hair and makeup — I just want to go somewhere in a hoodie and hang out with my PBR in a dark, smelly corner.  Obviously it’s fun to dress up and sashay around

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it is broke, it’s probably cool to hang on the walls. Those truisms are two similar and equally important pieces to the dive bar mythos. From complex themes and stuffy, plush seating, even the “dive” bars of New York can be a

When I hear terms like “slumming it in the East Village” or “East Village dive” I immediately conjure up images of pretentious blog douchebags who think that because there’s graffiti on the walls that this is a bad part of town oooooooh. Let’ s be real; the East Village has